“Her presence, like a robe pontifical,
    Ne’er seen but wonder’d at,”

was the actual queen of the neighbourhood; for, though she was the very soul of kindness, she was determined to have her own way, and had it.

Although I did not know all this at the time, such were the two ladies who held these different opinions about my preaching; the one who did nothing but read Messrs Addison, Pope, Paley, and Co., considering that I neglected the doctrine of works as the seal of faith, and the one who was busy helping her neighbours from morning to night, finding little in my preaching, except incentive to benevolence.

The next point where my recollection can take up the conversation, is where Miss Hester made the following further criticism on my pulpit labours.

“You are too anxious to explain everything, Mr Walton.”

I pause in my recording, to do my critic the justice of remarking that what she said looks worse on paper than it sounded from her lips; for she was a gentlewoman, and the tone has much to do with the impression made by the intellectual contents of all speech.

“Where can be the use of trying to make uneducated people see the grounds of everything?” she said.  “It is enough that this or that is in the Bible.”

“Yes; but there is just the point.  What is in the Bible?  Is it this or that?”

“You are their spiritual instructor:  tell them what is in the Bible.”

“But you have just been objecting to my mode of representing what is in the Bible.”

“It will be so much the worse, if you add argument to convince them of what is incorrect.”

“I doubt that.  Falsehood will expose itself the sooner that honest argument is used to support it.”

“You cannot expect them to judge of what you tell them.”

“The Bible urges upon us to search and understand.”

“I grant that for those whose business it is, like yourself.”

“Do you think, then, that the Church consists of a few privileged to understand, and a great many who cannot understand, and therefore need not be taught?”

“I said you had to teach them.”

“But to teach is to make people understand.”

“I don’t think so.  If you come to that, how much can the wisest of us understand?  You remember what Pope says,—­

   ’Superior beings, when of late they saw
    A mortal man unfold all Nature’s law,
    Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape,
    And show’d a Newton as we show an ape’?”

“I do not know the passage.  Pope is not my Bible.  I should call such superior beings very inferior beings indeed.”

“Do you call the angels inferior beings?”

“Such angels, certainly.”

“He means the good angels, of course.”

“And I say the good angels could never behave like that, for contempt is one of the lowest spiritual conditions in which any being can place himself.  Our Lord says, ’Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones, for their angels do always behold the face of my Father, who is in heaven.’”